[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[skutvik at online.no]

Hello Joe and  Arlo.

17 Dec. Arlo had asked Bo (and answered too):

> > I am NOT asking about what biological patterns became the "stepping
> > stone" to the social pattern. I am saying that before man existed,
> > before primates existed, WHAT responded to DQ?

> > I'll give you my answer. Everything. Plants responded biologically, as
> > did dinosaurs, and sabertooths, and mammothes, and bugs. All these
> > things responded to DQ biologically (and according to their
> > bio-complexity) as they CONTINUE to do today. 

I was about to answer you Arlo, but am lagging behind (have just 
closed an exhibition of my paintings) Phew, we don't disagree, but our 
respective approaches are different. In my lingo all living things ARE 
static biological responses, but do they constantly havre to respond to 
DQ to stay alive? I'm not sarcastic, but what's the point of the SQ if 
everything is DQ? The MOQ is the DQ/SQ aggregate, no?     
 
> > If you propose that they
> > "lost" their ability to respond to DQ (as Platt does), then I ask firmly
> > for an example of what an animal could do BACK THEN (in response to DQ)
> > that it CAN NO LONGER DO today. What were DQ-enabled animals in the
> > Mesozoic able to do that present day UNDQ-ed animals are no longer able
> > to do?

I thought Platt agreed with me but he is "dynamic" and has changed 
his mind ;-) The problem you pose here never comes up in my 
understanding. The inorganic-organic transition was the real dynamic 
event when DQ used the ambivalent inorg. pattern carbon as its 
vehicle to the biological level. The workings here I won't elaborate on, 
but life=feeding & reproduction and once these basic, but static, 
ground-rules were established life began evolving.    

> Certainly you see the absurdity in saying that things "lost" the
> ability to DQ when "man" appeared. (Another follow-up would be
> "when?" Did animals in North America suddenly "lose" the ability to
> respond to DQ when the first primate appeared in Africa? Or did
> animals only lose this ability when they encountered man (when man
> spread across the Siberian passage and into North America?)

Yes, I see the absurdity when it comes to "man" (in the Platt sense) 
and also the rest of your questionnaire. Man as the biological mammal 
(that's "family" isn't it?) and species Homo Sapient are just more 
complex biology, only when it came to the "carbon" of biology (IMO the 
intelligence of the big neo-cortex-equipped, brain of the said Homo) 
did DQ see a means to escape biology. 

I'm pursuing this line of reasoning because if every biological quirk is 
responding to DQ, or every evolutionary step is a SQ/DQ action, I can't 
quite understand when a level transition takes place. Life would be just 
more dynamic matter or society better biology ...etc.    

Joe says:

> Magnus proposes a ³big bang² at the beginning as DQ.  Evolution
> proposes that reality manifests in levels.  DQ, then, is the
> existential order of levels.  Whatever individual is in the level 
> responds to the DQ of that level.  

You and I Joe are old enough to have seen two cosmologies theories, 
Hoyle's "Steady State" and now the said BB. Perhaps the SS would 
have prevented the MOQ because it presupposes some creation of 
the universe (its Inorganic Level). Anyway I agree with your " Whatever 
individual ... (altered) 

    Whatever pattern there are at any level is a STATIC responce 
    to DQ  

> Pirsig proposed 4 levels of evolution, 4 levels for DQ.  For myself I
> follow the analogy to the musical octave and propose 7 levels for DQ.

Well he really proposed four STATIC levels. That these are static 
QUALITY goes without saying.

IMO, but I'm no fanatic. 

Bo